Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Pointless conversation seeking outcome with MWM

The time is fast approaching when I am will send one of those awful Christmas letters in a card so that distant relatives can find out what we have been up to in 2012.

I only started producing them a couple of years ago after disliking the genre all my life. "Tiffany is excelling at gymnastics and came 4th in the State Champs." You know the stuff - it makes you want to vomit.

Nevertheless, it is a sadly efficient way to let people know what we are up to as the Monsters rip through the development stages, so I started writing them.

I have been having a little trouble this year. You see nothing happened. Lots of nothing. A whole year of it, it transpired. We are living on one income so our "holiday" this year was 2 nights in a 70s vintage caravan in the mountains about 3 hours away. We saw cows. We had flu. It was crappy in so many special ways.

Can you believe the excitement? We saw a hydro-electric power station on our holiday. Better even than cows.

We haven't been anywhere or done anything on a fairly comprehensive scale. I find myself writing that we have had picnics (very reasonably priced) and are painting the hall. This is a dreadful letter.

To try and zazz things up, rather then printing a couple of photos and shoving them in the card, I thought I would include little pics in the letter this year. Sophisticated, yes I know. Consider me a newly-minted expert on the crop function.

The draft is written and the first version printed on our nasty printer. The pictures have red lines through them.

So I said to the husband, "Why have the pictures got red lines through them?"

"Ah yes" he said, "That is an indicator the heads need cleaning."

"Can you clean them?"

"I believe so."

Can you smell the bullshit, people? I take a calming breath and continue: "Do you actually know how to clean them?"

Several more iterations of clarity avoidance occur at this point, til finally, via my UN-unsanctioned interrogation technique he spits out, along with small particles of teeth and the last of his manly techno-pride: "I know they can be cleaned but I don't know how you actually do it."

So there you have it. Crappy letter, zero content and red liney pictures. Should be a collectors item.